Damian Garside

SAME PAGE

sorry reader, nothing for
you today
I’m om strike with
the other poets
over fair treatment

do you not see the barrier
here in the middle of the text
where it
says “picket line”
and begs
you not to cross it?

not just pens
and paper and AI assisted
wordprocessing programs

we have
to seize
the means of production

without
full autonomy over
the forces of creation

where would we be
where
would we be?

not between
here and the deep
blue sea but

right
at the bottom of it
just like drowned Percy
Bysshe Shelley
pretty much a saint
in this trade

so
deadly serious (that
you convinced yourself was
all about
    markings and meanings
whiff
    of ink
     on a page)

FLESH OF THE FAITH

some buffoon
they call and
who calls
himself
a philosophy
slipping between
jokes
and profundity
fires away

name of the game
dance
    of truth, not
so easy to work out
the steps
   world and self what
they want to say
for themselves
despite themselves
so damn intricate
so hard to
    pin down when
in this labyrinth every
level brings
fresh layer
of deception

and why
must he always
touch
his nose?

is that some
kind of tic, sign of
secret brotherhood or
silent spiritual homage
to H and L and
M his
forebears and yes,
masters

meanwhile I am continuing
this badly scripted
life story
my tale of desire
full of
twists and turns but
no story to speak
of itself

an iron wall
dystopian stuff with
digital chip on
the shoulder, chip
in the brain patriarchal
body guards
stretching between my
heart and its object
wherever that
object, whenever it
should
come into being

that the motor, engine of
everything should
be loss
and distance, incompleteness
and sadness

great for Slovenian
thinker, South African poet,
though
    getting it down in all
its harrowing
complexity
      could be an industry
might
not
    keep your warm at night
(flesh
    of the faith to
deeply
    hold on to) may
not even pay the rent at all

JUST MAYBE

maybe
if was just
bad juju

maybe you ran
into an electronic storm

your SUV cartwheeling
from zero to eighty
in two
point seconds

one day
we should sit down
put our
heads together
talk
about it

that is if the Fates
let you live
your soul
neither ascending
or descending
to
place of absolute rest
in a mind-
blowing shower

of hideous,
deadly,
fundamental sparks

MADAME FRANKENSTEIN

hi Madame Frankenstein
you were
bolt out
of the blue

jolt
to my system

electricity is life:
well our skynet cyborg
future could
not have proved that
more conclusively

and there you
all agog, in state of
supreme sublime horror
to see the face
of your
our
science fiction

of which you are
thd undoubted queen

BEYOND BELIEF

poetry
is carbon footprint

it is my
considered impression
that

whichever way
you elect most carefully
to slice
and dice it

Mr Wordsworth Wordsmith

poetry is truth
raw heart-
beating truth

and so
carry on regardless,
living your life of forge-
and-foundrey, lathe
and plane,
hammer and
chisel
metaphor

I’ll stick to my position
close my ears to your
never
gets new no way
open to revision
(with
surgical aural faith
grace and
precision)

stamping this on
all that I rhyme, all
you
cannot recall,
still
fail to see:

poetry is
truth

true
imprint

poetry is that
thing with

power
beyond belief

TWO POEMS

TWO POEMS
hole
nous

HOLE

there is a in my poem
a very fine hole,
a beautiful hole in fact

rain gets in
wind
whistles
through it

especially
when Mars and Venus
find themselves in
conjunction
or
imtimately worse

please, if you think
you can fix it
if you have
the technology
or rolls
and rolls of tape

write to
the address below
I desperately
need it mended, need
myself mended

only then
might i be able
to start
writing with
blind confidence
papering over everything

filling in the cracks
for instead of waning
as you
might suppose

I feel he is out there
but also
within the lines
bending them
to his will
shepherding
theit direction

waxing in power
the light suffusing everything

trash-talking all
that is
askew
tantamount
to an
apogee of
miserable insanity

hint of the infinite
constantly
streaming through

****

NOUS

he writes cursively
and yet
concisely

knowing full well
how ripe the world be
to swallow
this tripe

and there is your consensus:
hear it mewl in unison
(child father
to man but
not
for this generation)

a gathering gathers: spin-
doctors, masters of character
assassination, doctors
of diatribe

all one tribe whose
genealogy
is golden, palms
crossed with silver

commentators, phone hacks,
two-way
radioed manhood
cursed non-
Shakespearean gentlemen

they can call a summit every
minute print the words
that should
suspend
everything

deary deary all so dreary
Professor looks so
vacuous right
now

luckily his pen has
the nous to
perpetuate itself

PROUDLY

proudly
exactly at the moment
when angels fell

he
stood up

on his hind legs

put away
monkey business, childish
things
dropped
his prehensile tale

at which,
clock started ticking
for all obedience points
accrued
for infraction
points dropped

strewed the veld
with the detritus of
every hunter-
gatherer

later agricultural event

leaving bones to
be picked
by such as
Dawkins and Harari

bounding across new landscapes
from horizon
to horizon

virus
of conquest
so much space to acquire

RETURN

I rent a
flower

am renting it
right now

rented one
yesterday

this one though,
is special,

before
petals fade,
colour
fades

need to
take it back
get a full
refund, perhaps
even
accrued interest

good flower
good money

time waits
for no
man

but this
is how we
make time

time
(that strange
German sage
said it
again
and again)

time
is illusion
a fiction

time
is
return

in all
its horror
and beauty

Author Archives: Damian Garside

MR WEAVER